Excellent WBF - great thought leadership Michael ;) - I particullary like your point about link begging - you are so right you just have to ask in the right way and it works like magic, as you say. Haha I guess it's a case of some beggers are better than others!

Great WBF Rand and I particularly like your GTTP Content. There are lots of situations online where you see lots of unnecessary "fluff" on webpages which doesn't need to be there and is actually hindering the user experience and conversion rate. A good example is email marketing - often you only have preview pane to get the recipients interest and if this is full of general information, such as about the sender, then they won't even open your email and get to your targeted relevant information in my experience.As Matt says above a great reminder to K.I.S.S.

Another excellent post on video and SEO Phil - your posts really have opened my eyes to videos potential. After your last post I am looking at going down the route of using Wistia to host some product specific videos such as Appliances Online. We piloted this previously and found that these videos converted well. Also I am involved in the whole process of video creation through to marketing so I am not having to create a strategy round a pre-existing video set but rather creating video around our goals as you say. Thanks for all this information and the link to your full guide on video marketing.

Nice one Matthew - this is an excellent real life example of how you can build some decent links and gain exposure not matter what your organisation size. It is about looking at the bigger picture when it comes to link building and thinking outside the box, brilliant spot for a potential outreach that has really paid off, well done. I have always found in life that if you do someone a favour then they are keen to help you out where they can in return - and so a relationship is formed. :)

Excellent post - you are so right - it is not all about being the top of the SERPs if you have a poor CTR, although as you say this is becoming harder. Its like having a site with thousands of visitors but no conversions, it would be better to have half the visitors but with conversions. SEO is not standalone as you say - good SEO is an amalgamation of numerous different skills and should not be seen as finishing when you have decent rankings, as your visitors are not even in the marketing funnel until they make that click!

Hi MarieI think that this is an excellent post highlighting an all too common issue, although I think the title might be a bit controversial and would have probably been better with double inverted commas "SEOs", because the people that are doing this damage claim to be experts but are actually just looking at a quick way to make a buck and don't really understand the industry. I have lost count of the amount of times I have taken calls from agencies claiming to be the best and being able to improve rankings by looking at my meta tags - how shocking! I have also had "Seo Consultants" tell me that part of my site isn't ranking and when I have explained that is due to my robots.txt file they disagree and explain it is because I need more links etc, etc haha! I also think that Egol makes a good point; that these practises wouldn't exist if Google hadn't made them work so well, but I guess that is all part of the learning curve and evolution of the web - oh how we all remember the days of the meta crawler when the majority of searches returned results with adult content no matter what you searched for!The unfortunate thing with all of this is the fact that a lot of people, such as small business owners, are faced with tough times so they look for ways that they can generate business and the internet offers a relatively cheap way of doing this, plus the fact that the majority of people are now turning online to find products and services. If only we could educate the main stream on the fact that getting to the top of Google is not as easy as it maybe once was - it's not about a load of tags or as many links as possible containing the keyword they want to be no.1 for, it is a much more complicated and in-depth process.I am still an advocate of quality over quantity and I think this is paying off more than ever since penguin. Nice post

Nice post, the sheer size of e-commerce sites can cause people to be almost out faced but by slowly tackling the different aspects in a bite size fashion as you suggest I have found that success will come. Picking the low hanging fruit first in terms of what are the easiest products to make changes to that will lead to increases in ranking and traffic, especially in relation to long-tail keywords.

Also in terms of information architecture and usability of a site I think it is always a good idea to get a second pair of eyes, or maybe three or four - very sound advice.

What a great post Chris - this shows that with a little imagination you can find an angle for anything that will grab peoples interest when it comes to blogging and it doesn't all have to be high brow. As ever real world examples of success stories with metrics are always good to see, thanks for sharing!

Now to get my thinking cap on as we are in the process of producing a blog for our niche...

I think anyone would have been ecstatic with 87/87 placing badges on their websites. I was just intrigued as to whether you knew how many had placed these badges on their site with this optimized anchor text. I think it would be interesting to see your results in relation to how many links you have with exact match anchor text especially in the post penguin world with everyone being concerned about their link profiles and over doing exact match anchor text. This method has lead you to excellent results which you are holding, so maybe another possible interesting article/follow up indeed..

I think it was a great idea to out reach to the suppliers to help market the contest once again well done!

An excellent case study of how a strategy like this can be successful in terms of gaining exposure and links with an increase in traffic and rankings being the end result. It is also good to see that you have found a way to engage in social media successfully with your business after an initial struggle to fit into the social landscape.

A few quick questions -

Did all 87 entrants place the customized badge on their site?

Was the optimized anchor text that you provided them the same for each badge?

Excellent to see what a difference having and following a proper plan makes in relation to a site restructure. As the others have said it's always good to see two real world examples and have them next to each other for comparison!

I hadn't come across the bulk URL checker either, but I will be giving it a whirl on a current project. Thanks

Nice post Dr Pete it is so true that the difference between the ones that find the most success and the ones that don't are those that persevere and fully commit themselves to the cause, as highlighted so well by (2) Future Glory with Ira Glass. I think we have all been in a situation where we haven't got the results we have wanted as quickly as we would have liked and have been distracted/less committed because of this. I also think you are so right about holding back due to fear of running out of great ideas, dare to succeed! Never has it been truer that the more you do something the better you become at it. A very thought provoking post - nicely done as usual - thanks August 10, 2012

Hear, hear Dr Pete hit the nail on the head - email marketing is still very current and powerful if done well and like he says it isn't at the mercy of Google's algorithm updates. Take heed and help Google proof your online presence.

Great article on Content Marketing Gianluca; very informative, keep them coming :)

This makes me even more determined to get myself to Mozcon next year - I love coffee and reading this it sounds like a coffee lovers dream. If I wasn't an SEO I think I would be a Barista!! Post bookmarked - thanks Jonathon. July 24, 2012

Congratulations to all selected what an achievement! And here's to the other 146 writing YouMoz posts as I am sure there are some very interesting and insightful posts that can come from this. July 10, 2012

Nice post Dan and well done in highlighting the fact that if you concentrate on building a site that serves its purpose and is information rich with fresh, unique content then you are going to automatically start being noticed by search engines. As you say it is important to make sure that you follow the basic compliance but make sure your focus is on providing the user with what they want and giving them an excellent experience in doing so without purely basing your site around search engines!

Anything worth doing is worth doing well - and so will take more time and effort than any quick fix!

I think you might have got the wrong impression from what I was staying above -

meta keywords definitely don't harm you in my opinion, but I think they are worthless in modern SEO other than possibly giving an easy and clear picture of what keywords you are going after.

However what harm does this really have in relation to your competitors - none - as any competitor with a proper online marketing strategy will already know what keywords you are targeting and how competitive you are in the SERPs. I was just trying to emphasize their value true worth!

I don't think it uses them at all, do you have any clear evidence of Bing using them? I have pages that rank number one in Bing for competitive terms that don't have any Meta Keywords, other pages in the results are well optimized and have meta keywords...

And a homepage stuffed with meta keywords is the easiest way to pick up which keywords you want/are targeting - I think it is definitely quickest way to get a flavour when browsing competition, but obviously you still need to do proper analysis...

I agree Moosa - I still receive emails from marketing agencies offering to do SEO and putting emphasis on meta keywords as part of their pitch - how shocking! The only value that Meta Keywords give are to your competitors, because it instantly tells them what keywords you are specifically targeting haha

Nice post Toby and I like your infographic. Content marketing is the way forward developing this excellent content that customers are hungry to digest. As we hear many times; content is king, but a king is nothing without a kingdom and that is your audience/social following. You could be producing pure gold content but if you haven't developed a decent method of gaining exposure then it is worthless, you have highlighted the different forms of audience development excellently. I think lots of people that are trying to gain those important quality links to increase their sites authority will gain a great insight by reading this. I for one will be refering a few people to this post.

I was just about to write a comment saying how great this post is and I think Neal has highlighted some very important features in GA. I have found that quite a few people overlook utm tags. Here is a link to Googles Tool that allows you to create these tags -

Once you have filled the fields out it produces a url with the tracking information in it. Then all you need to do is copy and paste the url to whatever source you are tracking whether it be a link on a banner ad or a link in an email campaign. This will then appear nicely segemented under traffic sources in GA.

note: essentially you are entering your target url and this is being modified with tracking information for GA, so if you are doing a banner ad campaign you would enter your banner ad landing page url in the tool and then label it. Once created you place the modified url as the banner link. This applies to a wide range of sources as Neal has mentioned.

I think the main thing with this new law should be to help educate visitors on cookies and how they can disable them, but what implications it might have for their browsing and the sites functionality.

haha this isn't the first time I have come across the famous Ling's site in relation to online marketing and it's unique approach. Thanks for highlighting their approach to the cookie law - we had a good laugh at the different unique cookies they "employ".

One of my favs - "cookie:how_gullible_is_visitor=VERY;

This cookie sees how many times this cookie viewer is invoked to determine the gullibility and stupidity of visitors."

Hi Christian - what a great insight and highlight of SEO for other languages. When I have come across this subject in the past I have found so many people lose sight of the fact that direct translations of their top english preforming keywords aren't what people in other languages would search for when looking for the same product/information. Well done and thanks!

Agreed - I have personally experienced the effects of a template update to an ecommerce site that has caused thousands of pages to be de-indexed or go into the supplementary index of Google. Within a very short time of resolving the issue the pages indexed shot straight back up!

It never ceases to amaze me how people want so much for so little and are then shocked when they don't get it. I think you highlight the truth - you get what you pay for! Reading the examples of some of the low quality articles that clients have asked you to produce I don't know why they haven't just wrote it themselves, or better still not bother! Decent content takes time, research and effort whether it is your own or someone elses - your article gets this point across so well in my opinion.

Great article Kate - sometimes people are afraid of being made to look stupid or of failing, but the only way to really win is to dare. If you dont go for it you will never move forward and lots of great ideas have had thousands of bad ones come before them. Oh and by the way - yes I do want to be a millionaire you are right - how did you guess? - lets hope being brave will get me there one day!

Excellent review Harry - some great insights for those of us that couldn't be there! It was good to see that someone posed a question on over-optimisation to the panel, with this being such an important topic at the moment! It has once again been highlighted that it is so important to aim at producing a quality, content rich site aimed at producing a great user experience! Thanks

Nice to see an example of somebaody winning with the Panda update and actually using it to their advantage. Aiming at giving visitors the best experience when using your website is so important and this helps highlight this act, some SEOs lose sight of the fact that your website is for human visitors and you should design the site around them not purely around search engines. I think a great example of losing site of this is over-optimised titles, they might make you rank well but if they look spammy your are likely to get less click throughs from the SERPs - people are wising up to this sort of tactic in my opinion.I have always tried to produce good quality content that would serve the visitor and by doing this I have usually seen a low bounce rate on pages and websites as an average.

Brilliant article Kieran, and a great example of how to properly use the microsite concept and how you went about promoting it. You definitely managed to get some experts onboard, and what an impact this had - thanks for actually showing examples of those involved and how they helped spread your message!

Ahh yes beer, a very important tool in the SEOs arsenal - as it has been mentioned so many times in this community - an important aspect of online marketing is about building relationships, whether it be with colleagues, social influencers or customers. Psychology is an essential part of what we do!

I found exactly the same on an ecommerce site that I was working on - a change by developers caused the site, that had thousands of pages indexed when doing a "site:" search, to drop out of Google when the load time went to being around 20 secs on intial load of the homepage. This all happened in the space of a few days, panic set in and a fix went in shortly after - hey presto the number of pages indexed went right back up, so I believe they were all sat in the supplementary index, clearly showing that site preformance is taken into account.

I agree with your point that websites be should easy to use, but I think you can still use all sorts of content if you have a page optimised in the right way so that the different types of content are not slowing your site down. There are lots of ways around loading larger files so that it doesn't hinder but enrich the users experience, take for instance setting your large images or flash files to load after the rest of the page. I have done this successfully in the past using an onload function. I think the most important thing is that people need to remember they are designing sites around people and not search engines, however with the Panda updates we know that Google is taking this into account.

Nice post Svetoslav, I think that improving load time is so important and I have found spending time optimisng sites even with simple techniques such as optimising all images for web using something like photoshop has improved things. I have also noticed that when I have optimised a site and Google has shown an increase on site preformance under GWT then the crawls stats have also improved with more pages and kilobytes downloaded per day, so to me it is clear of the benefit of optimising a sites load time in regards to Google. Not to mention the impact on user experience of a site that loads quickly, like you have said peoples tolerance for site load times has become very low. I have seen reducing load times reduce bounce rates on numerous occasions.

Great post Rohit, I too have had the situation where I have had to explain the difference between a visit and visitor to senior management. As you have mentioned it is so important to make clear that the unique visitor metric is time specific and that is why figures may not add up if you take individual time periods and then add those figures together yourself, as you have demonstrated above.

What a great post Gianluca - so many of us spend time researching and absorbing information on topics related to the sites that we run/market online, but how many use content curation to bring the best of that information together and actually use it to benefit you from a digital marketing prospective by creating one rich information source? I for one haven't but now I have read your post I will be aiming to use content curation and taking your advice to aid my online marketing strategy - thank you!

Hi Bryan - I have been running this on a new profile I created for the last six days and the data it has produced is great - very clear and easy to present to others. I have also been filtering by location as my secondary dimension as discussed below in order to gain an insight into my rankings. Excellent stuff - thanks again!

Lots of great information to take from this post - thanks Jacob. I have been optimising videos on our Youtube channel and found what a difference decent targeted titles and tags have made to video views! One of the simplest things anyone can do when optimising a video is look at the tags of the most popular videos and consider using them. It is also not the first article I have read when researching optimising videos and being advised to put 'Video' in the title - this is a great piece of advice and works well especially on search engines when people are searching for videos! Shockingly I hadn't come across the Youtube keyword tool until your post, but I will be sure to use this for further optimisation of our videos. I also hadn't gone any further than submitting videos to Youtube but I will be considering these other services after your recommendation. Thanks again!

I agree with your last point Simon - every second spent attacking your competitors is time not being spent developing your own site. Apart from the ethical side and potential legal implications why worry about spending time harming your competitors? Instead concentrate on building your own site and making it the best out there so that it naturally beats your competitors over time and if it doesn't maybe spend some of this time finding out why?

Very interesting post Carson - I think your diagram in the "Build a Legitimate Link Portfolio" section clearly highlights where you don't want your site link profile to be. I have always worked by the principle that a strong link profile takes time to build and establish - if somethings worth having it isn't easy to obtain and takes effort and dedication. I think this post just highlights the fact that it is getting more and more difficult to take shortcuts and game the system, which I think is great for those that are taking time to produce decent content and earn worthy links from relevant, reputable sources on merit.

Nice post Peter – I too like the fact that you have included some real working examples of you putting into action what you have suggested. This is great food for thought and a great reminder to check your current strategy when using outreach letters/emails! I always work on the principle that you don’t ask you don’t get, but this has to be done in the right manner or you still don’t get. I like the incentives strategy and the way you try and personalise it to show you have put some thought into it – another way of building a relationship with the site owner/webmaster.

Excellent post and strategy - it is so important to understand your audience and try and get into their thought process so that you can tailor your site to fit in with what they are looking for. Nice use of the SOSTAC® model of marketing - it just demonstrates how to effectively work produce a plan for you online marketing strategy. Without a proper strategy set out you can't see where you have come from, how you have improved and where you are going! SEO is some much more than keywords and being number one in search engines as you have highlighted so well. Analytics packages are so great when it comes to understanding your users and their behaviour. I think this sentence sums your point up so well - "In that sense, smart SEO is just applied psychology, adapted and modified to integrate effectively with other elements that power the e commerce engine".

Great article which I think follows a similar line to what Trond's post "Get Inside Their Heads - A Strategic Framework For Super-Effective SEO!". Online marketing is so heavily entwined with psychology when it comes to understanding how people interact with each other and the internet. You need to effectively understand how to form relationships with others in order to build them yourself. I think that you have highlighted this fact excellently in this post build relationships and you will build links. Here's to putting a dent in the Universe Ed - well done!

Great post Colby - I have been considering using pinterest for some time, particularly with its high exposure of late. I have found your step by step guide very useful especially the part about sizing it correctly. Incorrect sizing would be a mistake that is easy to make and I think this could have happened to me if it wasn't for your article but thanks to you I am now wiser to this. Thanks!!

Excellent stuff Takeshi - I hadn't thought about creating memes before this, although I was aware of them and saw them pop up regularly. However reading your article has made me think that this would be a great way of gaining some links to a club website that I run - I have some great ideas for some very relevant memes that anyone interested in the site topic will appreciate! - Thanks

Great article Carson - I like your suggestions for developing creativity and the fact that anyone can be creative with the right nurturing environment (I like you suggestion of funding gym sessions - I wonder if my boss will go with that one?). I actually tend to go to the gym most lunchtimes and find that I work much better in the afternoon so I can see why you suggest this. I think your right with company culture and inspiring creativity sometimes it is too easy to be bogged down in constraints - you need to "dare to soar" as they say. I look forward to reading any follow up articles you produce.

Hi Eric - nice post - I will be giving Trello a go to help manage all the different aspects of online marketing that I have to cover as an in-house SEO. I think this will be a great tool to help manage online marketing activities across multiple channels and make sure everything gets suitable time spent on it. Thanks!

Nice case study Eppie and what a great way to introduce your link analysis tool - Link Detective. I think it is content like this that makes SEOMoz the great community that it is and I always like the fact that other members are regulary intoducing us to their tools, which I like to have a play with. I know it has been dropped now, but it always amazes me when you see overtly spammy websites ranking for competitve terms. Good thing is they tend to get caught in the end as this demonstrates - hence why I like to keep my hat white - patience is a virtue as they say and I have found it to pay off.

Excellent post Eric - your article made me think of the comment by iPullrank on the article "The Last Linkbuilding Strategy Your Business Will Ever Need", he said, "What it all boils down to is: Make News and Make Friends." Never a truer word spoken in relation to online marketing. The internet is a very social place and building up relationships with people especially influencers is a very important aspect of it I think. A good example of how a lot of people go wrong when doing social media marketing is by just tweeting links etc rather than trying to get involved in the current conversations and build relationships with others, especially influencers. As Eric said above "When you go to that first neighborhood party, you don't walk around asking everyone there to give you $20" - I will be using this to get this point across in the future - sometimes inane conversations can be very powerful at cemeting a relationship!

I would like to second that Sajeet - Gianluca is right, I was only thinking that when reading one of your responses to a post yesterday - "12 Things That Will Kill Your Blog Post Every Time" confirmed by the rest of the moz community with the 31 thumbs up!

Nice post Julianne and another SEO that is highlighting pinterest along with other communities as one to consider. I think it is very exciting that pinterest is growing in popularity everyday! It is definitely one to watch and consider in your strategy to expand brand reach and gain links!

I have to be honest I have mainly used it in relation to ecommerce and product catalogues but applying it to the generation of any new content for a website is a good plan - I like the idea for bloggers and new posts. I guess you could say that essentially it helps highlights any gaps in your content. I also think that site speed is a powerful tool in relation to any websites as you can easily identify slow pages and make easy tweeks/alterations such as reducing image sizes etc to see the impact on load time. I have found that there is a lot of low hanging fruit that can be picked in relation to this especially in a post Panda world.

Great post Eugen - I have found site speed and site search very handy tools for improving the user experience on sites, so it is great that you have brought these to everyones attention. As you suggested with site search I use it to make sure the most relevant products are displayed when the users are entering different terms which site search shows me. I also use it to monitor what products are in demand and pass this knowledge on to colleagues when there are products that aren't in our range. As some of the others have commented flow visualization looks a very handy insight, but I too hadn't used it yet oh dear! However thanks to you I will be now - well done!

Nice post Daniel, I think it is particularly refreshing to have a post on something other than Google in relation to webmaster tools. I haven't given my Bing Webmaster account as much attention as I probably should have recently, but this has given me the nudge I needed to go back and reinvestigate it further, especially with these additions and your explanation - thanks!

Hi Zack, I have seen articles on the use of Python in relation to SEO in the past but have never ventured as far as actually using it. I am a big fan of spreadsheets, but this post has persuaded me to give it a go! I have glanced at the documentation section on python.org but a more condensed simple how-to tutorial would be great - as sajeet suggested. Well done.

I really like the idea of this type of strategy - excellent post Rand and thank you Mike for giving a real example of how this strategy has actually been successful for a brand! The potential results are far greater than purely buying some links - that is very clear!

Great Post iPullRank concisely highlighting a true SEO strategy - and as you have pointed out if more people practising SEO worked like this the web would be a better place, for me it was all summed up in this sentence - "the more we optimize with people in mind the more likely their needs will be fulfilled and consequently, the more likely we are to get those people to convert". A win win situation for SEO's and consumers alike, Excellent - I will definitely be sharing this post!

Jim, I can also see why you feel this might be a concern in relation to privacy but it is important to remember that online marketing relies on the metrics from none personalised data in order to produce a better experience for the user by honing content to match their requirements and identifying any potential issues on a website. This technique is not identifying who you are logged in as or any other such details. As Paul says The EU cookie directive is coming into effect shortly, I think this new directive has really put the Cat amongst the pigeons by placing some tight restrictions on the monitoring of websites using tools such as Google Analytics which rely on cookies. The potential impact on the digital marketing sector in the UK has been very concerning.

Nice work Tom and thanks for sharing - this is an ideal way to show the potential impact of increased social network activity to senior management - I will be implementing this shortly in order to give more weight to my recommendations. Thanks!

I think this strategy will obviously get results but I think it is easier said than done. In practice I have found it very difficult to get employees to spend time writing a one off blog post let alone asking for two a month! Even educating them and senior management in SEO and link building practices doesn't mean that it is easy to action your suggestions. I have found that the employees with the most value to add to any sort of blog article in relation to your company are already run off their feet with their own role let alone getting them to find time to put a few hours aside to participate in producing blog posts. I also think there are other practices that add value to a link strategy - viral content not in the form of a blog post - maybe youtube video campaign. Plus there are other ways of gaining links of value including asking for them (maybe when pointing out a broken link etc) as many other articles on here have recently demonstrated. P.S I do like you giving the suggestion of incentivising employees however this could be a double edged sword as they may give more time to this practice than their actual role which could be very damaging to the company and SEO strategy in the company when it falls out of favour with senior management - due to the impact!

Nice article for the ideal scenario Rand - I, as many other above, work on a much smaller scale as an in-house SEO. However I have found that getting others from all different departments involved in the web marketing process has helped strengthen our SEO strategy and make my own workload more manageable - whilst producing results!

I had a problem with a page in the past that had too many keywords in the anchor text to other internal pages and found that by changing the keywords to a simple call to action the page started ranking again. The speed at which this change occured clearly indicated it had gone into Google Supplementary index I would say. I had 16 internal links with keyword rich anchor text..

Thumbs up Nick for giving a real life example of how easy it is to get carried away with optimising a website for the bots and forgetting the whole point of a website - to serve human visitors. I think that lots of people practising SEO have made the mistake of over optimising at some point - myself included. However, now I always tell people that search engine rankings are iimportant, but your focus should be on quality content for the end user, as we all know content is king! By following this your website will gradually gain authority, through recognition with links and mentions, which in turn will lead to higher rankings.

Using blekko to evaluate web directories looks like an interesting method which I am going to be getting having a play with. I have briefly used blekko, but maybe not given it the attention it has deserved, this article has however motivated me thanks David! Also nice to see Greg from blekko giving some input on this post! Any other tips or insights you would like to share with the community??

Nice article Dave, I think your method for a 60 minute check on your website is very sound, and I think all levels of experience could easily follow your audit. I do however think that Sarjeet had a point that if a site does have GWT installed this is one of the qucikest methods to get an overview of your sites technical health. As gfiorelli quite rightly says maybe a follow up article in relation to Analytics and GWT? How would you supplement your 60 minute strategy with access to GWT if at all?

Nice article with a very sound method for turning your content into link bait - I especially like the fact that you continue to use your methodology consistently even in the comments on here - for this I think you deserve many tweets from social influencers well done ;)

Excellent post and nice strategy on reaching the right person. Once again another article that pushes the idea of content being king - as you say "Step 1 - The Mirror Check". If only more people took this advice, the internet would be a better place!

I will be definitely having a play with this tool over the coming few days - it looks like it makes the process of link checking much quicker and easier. Thanks for your time and effort in developing this tool guys - thumbs up!!

I think you have made a very good point that your link profile needs to look natural (as with many other aspects of SEO looking natural is key), and should fit in with the pattern that other sites within your industry follow. I also think that in a lot of situations the actual URL can contain the exact brand match, so having a larger number of these links can look natural, as many website giving links are more likely to cite the site url in a link as a source. I have often found this to be the case anyway.

Excellent insight into the best ways to help your content go viral. On a side note I think we now have conclusive proof (other than his excellent articles, keynotes and being the wizard of moz) that Rand is an SEO Ninja - first frame of this weeks video looks like he is about kung fu the camera lol!!

Nice article and good point made to sum it up at the end - content is king and producing a press release with good quality content that is worth sharing is a winning formula that will acheive the desired effect! That's why I have never been a fan of "SEO" tools that can create multiple press releases etc from one piece of content, which I know some people are fans of, but once again this is SPAM which is unlikely to be naturally shared and gain links...

Nice post - this sounds like an effective strategy for using automation for social seo. Like koozai_mike I would be interested to hear your method for the second part of the automation - verifying they have fulfilled the task to gain access to the prize?

Yeah, like you say the key is relevancy and by using methods such as doing guest posts and speaking at relevant conferences you are taking that all important step to becoming an authority in your industry sector which will cause people to sit up and take note and lend authroity to the sites you are linked to. This will help lead to link building gold. January 13, 2012

Excellent insight in to the true aspects of SEO. SEO is about thinking outside the box and finding every possible angle to produce positive brand exposure online. Increasing the awareness of more people everyday that can find some form of interest/relation with your brand. With this will come recognition through links, the currency of search enginges. A friend of mine recently said he wanted to create a website in relation to his interest. He asked what was the best way of doing it and obtaining a healthy amount of traffic on his website. I said he needs a strategy not just to optimise the onpage seo aspects of his site. I said he needed to start by considering the social networks such as twitter and start contributing to relevant topics, building up relevant followers/connections so that when he launches his website he can grab the attention of others interested in the same topic. As you have pointed out a web presence is about the whole package not just getting the onsite stuff right. By targeting every channel available you can increase the focus on you website which in turn will increase your search engine rankings without purely focusing on them, as nicely highlighted in your article above in the section how to increase the "linkability" of your business. January 13, 2012

Excellent post Rand - I am starting my own blog in the next couple of weeks - just creating it at the moment and I will be following the advice in this article closely. Best lesson I have taken from it is stick at it and you will get there in the end - perseverance is key! Thanks :)

Hi Joe - sorry for the late reply been very busy with it being the start of the year. I had two sites linking to each other and benefiting from it - they were both on the same webmaster tools and analytics account. I have since cut down this as I was dubious about the practice and potential pentality that could be gained at some point when Google caught up. I do still however link the two sites as I don't see a problem with it. However due to templates etc I saw benefits gained from a large number of links between the two sites which I have recitified. I would be interested to hear anyone elses experience on this? I don't think I was penalised because the sites linking to each other was logical. I think you would be foulish not to think Google takes note of multiple sites on the same Google account linking to each other, but that is why some try to game the system by setting up multiple accounts for their websites and then link them to each other - which looks less natural I think!?

An ideal scenario is to become an authority within your chosen field/area and to have a blog and websites related to this with quality content, which you appear to have done, so I can see why this would work when linking sites. As you say it would appear more natural that your sites would link to sites that you are working on in the same area for different companies. I have also found significant impact on ranking when having links from websites mainly in the same area as the website you are trying to push up the search engines. I also agree that links from quality articles and associated websites tend to have more impact than directory or blog links. A websites link profile is a main indication as to its area and the weight it carries in that area after all.

Motaquote that is definitely worth thinking about and I would be interested to hear if you or anyone else has had success with such practice over the long term, although I am still a little dubious. In the short term I saw positive results from sites that had the same owner but separate webmaster accounts, hosts and IP addresses. December 23, 2011

Yes you are right Dejan when a piece goes viral or a link bait campaign kicks in then it is possible to generate a large number of links in a small time. I suppose I was thinking more around the quality of the links but again these type of campaigns if successful can grab the attention of major social influencers etc. The biggest thing I have learnt with SEO though is take your time and do it properly in all aspects really - I suppose you might call it playing safe, but I think if you genuinely create a worthy resource links and ranking will follow naturally.

Excellent post Dejan, I think it reinforces the fact that SEO is about quality when it comes to links and to obtain quality links in large number isn't realistic in a short amount of time in Googles eyes. I have found that taking my time and looking for decent links from sites of authority has always paid off. However as with most of us I have seen short term increases in rankings and page rank from linking one site I own to another. However I departed from this method when reading others experiences/downfalls and I think this was a wise choice.

Good question zen2seo - I think that rich snippets will help add relevancy to the search listings, however with every positive there is a negative. In any competitive environment there are people looking to beat the system and win by whatever means necessary! There are lots of areas of SEO that are open to abuse by spammers but I am not sure I would actually call them spam themselves? I think that it all depends how well the search engines police this new format and effectively reduce abuse... December 24, 2011